Of Mice and Men Literature Analysis

General

1.       Two farm hands, Lennie and George, start the story at a pond discussing the future. They have it all planned out and are about to meet a new employer. Lennie is not only slow, but extremely powerful. This combination has got them in trouble in the past so it makes George weary of the new job. As they are hired on a new farm they learn about the others, including a woman married to Curly who causes mischief with the men on the farm. Later on Lennie accidentally kills a puppy he was playing with, like he kills every small animal he touches, and tries to cover it up. Curly’s wife comes into the barn and sees Lennie hiding the dead puppy and compares her hair to the softness of the dead animal’s fur. She encourages Lenny to touch it, he’s too rough, and she screams. Lennie shakes her and accidentally snaps her fragile neck. He leaves the ranch for the pond at the beginning of the story and waits there. George finds the dead woman and puppy and runs off to the pond as well with a head start on the others who now want to lynch Lennie. George arrives at the pond where Lennie is waiting, tells him again about the farm they’ll buy together and the rabbits, and shoots Lennie in the back of the head.

2.       The theme of Of Mice and Men is that friendship isn’t about equality, but more about what the other person brings to our lives. George may always have to take care of Lennie, but without him George wouldn’t be the person he is today. Lennie brings an innocence and hope to George that he wouldn’t be able to obtain on his own, and without George to look after him Lennie wouldn’t be able to function properly in normal society.

3.       John Steinbeck’s tone throughout the story is sad. There is a lot of death and loneliness in the author’s writing that is created through the characters and their lives with one another.  Crooks, the only black man on the ranch never has anyone who cares about him. Lennie, a main character, gets shot in the back of the head. Innocence in the form of a grown man kills innocence in living things.

4.       Foreshadowing- "I ought to of shot that dog myself, George. I shouldn't ought to of let no stranger shoot my dog." Candy tells George this towards the middle of the book.

Conflict- Internal conflict between the love of a friend and what’s best for them within George.

Figurative Language- "Lennie covered his face with huge paws and bleated with terror." Connecting two things that don’t at first seem related like Lennie’s hands and huge paws.

Motif- Lennie’s attraction to soft animals and just soft objects in general is a reoccurring concept throughout the story.

Setting- A placement of the characters that helps guide their actions and the storyline. In Of Mice and Men the setting is a farm.

Irony- It’s ironic that Lennie is the gentlest character in the story but seems the most dangerous. He is constantly, yet accidentally, killing things with his strength but doesn’t by any means want to or wish harm upon anything or anyone else.

Symbol- The mice that Lennie crushes are symbolic of the fragility of life as well as of Lennie himself

Point of View- 3^rd person omniscient.

Characterization

1.       Crooks is directly described as the only black man on the farm as well as being a cripple. Through his diction and the way he describes his existence, Crook becomes less a crippled black man and more a lonely soul who attempts to cover up his pain with a crude disposition in any new encounter. Curly’s wife is introduced to the reader as a trouble maker and somewhat of a harlot.  As the story progresses however, the author uses her conversations with Crooks and Lennie to portray a woman so far forgotten by her husband and so lonely as to seek the company of anyone who looks her way. She’s no longer this trouble making, horrible wife in the readers’ eyes, but a woman misunderstood and forgone by society.

2.       Steinbeck uses different diction with different characters in the story to show social belonging. Lennie and Crooks being the best examples of this change in diction. Lennie talks as a mentally challenged person would and Crooks’ diction reflects that of an uneducated black man during that time period. As for syntax I didn’t notice much change when the author focused on character, his writing structurally didn’t seem to alter as a result of a switch from scenery to character description.

3.       The protagonist, George, is a rather static character. His views of the world and others don’t alter much and he pretty much stays the same guy all the way to the end. However, he is a round character and has his different sides; the outward cynic and the internal softy.

4.       This was definitely a real person story. I came away from the reading filled with a palpable feeling of loss and sadness.  The death of Lennie is especially difficult because the reader feels the way George does…Lennie didn’t mean to hurt anyone.

Lord of the Flies Literary Analysis :)

General

1.       A plane full of British boys crashes into a deserted island. Leaders quickly arise and attempt to recreate civilization within the group. There’s a clash of interests between leadership; one wants rescue and the other hunting. The boys slowly deteriorate the structure of their old society as they begin to embrace their animalistic instincts. The original group breaks up and they begin to fight with each other to the point of a taken life of two innocent children. At the very brink of savagery the boys are saved by a passing ship. It is unknown to the reader how a reintroduction to civilized society will be handled by those who’ve gone beyond the borders of socially acceptable behavior and thought.

2.       I believe the theme of Lord of the Flies is that within us all is a constant conflict between savagery and civility. Only human will can decide which of those demons we let rule our behavior.

3.       William Golding portrayed the story in an unsettling tone. "'Maybe there is a beast....maybe it's only us.'" This is very disturbing to say the least, that a child would make a connection like that after such a short time period of self-governed existence. It’s also frightening to know that the boys could reach a state of savagery to where they would take another’s life without regret, at least in the physical sense. Golding tells his story in a way that is realistic so as to be unsettling to a people so used to rules and regulations. "Here, invisible yet strong, was the taboo of the old life."

4.       Connotations- The conch shell was used in this story to represent law, order and civility to the boys.

Denouement- This is the very end of the story after the climax. When the ship comes and rescues them.

Dialogue- Helped me get an understanding of the characters and their internal conflicts without having to listen in on their thoughts. "'after all we aren't savages really...'"

:)*Hyperbole- This was used frequently by the boys to help the reader further into the adolescent mind that is left without the guidance and protection of its origins. “’ We're English, and the English are best at everything.'" (Clearly not flying)

Irony- Helped me to enjoy the book by unintentionally making it funny to me. "The rock struck Piggy a glancing blow from chin to knee; the conch exploded into a thousand white fragments and ceased to exist." The symbol of law and order to be destroyed by a ricochet of savagery.

Gothic Details- The authors tone was well created by the at times horrifying settings that dwelled within the story and the imaginations of the children. Simons encounter with The Lord of the Flies (pig head on a stick that talks)

Personification- By giving the dead pig head the ability to speak (at least to Simon) it helped me relate it more deeply to my perceptions of the world and what governs it. It became not just a dead animal, but a symbol of human will and how it controls our minds and our actions.

Characterization

1.       Golding describes Piggy as fat and having glasses but later through his dialogue and actions shows Piggy to be the voice of reason and the last lingering hope for civilized society. As Ralph is introduced to the reader he is beautiful and strong, with the qualities and brains of a true leader. Once indirectly characterized through his decent from rules to instinct, Golding left in my mind a boy far from his roots and lost in his inability to remain the person he had always seen himself to be.

2.       William Golding doesn’t alter his syntax or diction when he focuses on character. His writing style is consistent throughout, helping to make the connection between man and wild because one is not written of any differently from the other.

3.       The protagonist, Ralph, is a very dynamic character. He starts off on the island as a symbol of law and regulation, and through time transitions to an instinctual beast with the lust for all that his former conscious had fought against. Ralph isn’t a round character however because we see only what is done and said on the outside. His flatness gives the reader the freedom to roam within their own wishes and imaginations of what he could be wanting and thinking at any moment. As far as the writings of Golding however, the reader is never to truly understand the thought process behind the boy turned beast.

4.       I feel I met a boy by reading Lord of the Flies. The writing felt to me as though I was there to witness a decent to madness firsthand and lose a rational and respectable friend to his primal instincts. Ralph wasn’t just a character in a story; he was human will destroying itself through its hopeless quest for what is right and true in the world. “Even the sounds of nightmare from the other shelters no longer reached him…” He was in my mind what a real person would, if lost from civilization, become.

Why does the technological world hate me

http://forum.pokefarm.com/showthread.php?9930-A-Pokemon-Sonnet-Start-of-my-Story

So just how did the Pokemon World form?
And how did pokemon then come to be?
It all started with a galactic storm,
To know the tale you should listen to me.
It started when The three Beings did wake,
And three titans finally turned alive,
The universe cracked open and did shake
And the world it did break up into five.
A god of pokemon came down to earth,
It made a group of creature strong and wild,
The human race then stood upon the hearth,
To capture these creatures would be so mild,
These creature then would live in harmony,
That peace would then stay forever to be.

Hamlet Remix Act III

 

This is what I see in Act III (:

Midterm Autopsy

I don't know what a midterm autopsy is supposed to be but here's how I did things. I chose 4 of the lists to take to school the day of the Midterm.
I half-ass looked at the other lists a couple times the week prior to the Midterm
I crossed my fingers right before I got to class that the lists he chose were the ones I had studdied the most. It went surprisingly well.
Luckily I am relatively good with words to begin with so the ones I did not understand I was able to make an educated guess on.
In the end I got a 75% on this Midterm...not bad considering the amount of effort I put into studdying was about 15-20% of what I could have done. I make up for the other 55% with pure genius...not really but I did what I did and got a grade better than I had hoped for so I'm happy :)
I can improve for the final by actually studying this time...might just be the plan, who knows.

Shakespeare

a) I can honestly say I’ve heard the name a thousand times but never cared enough to inquire what Hamlet was about. If the title sounds boring to me I usually just do not care what the story is about.

b)  I know Shakespeare was a writer in medieval times I think. I know he wrote Romeo and Juliet and that’s all I really care to know because that story was uninteresting enough as it was.

c) We frown because everyone knows how Shakespeare writes in iambic pentameter and that his writing is too fancy.

d) To make this reading experience amazing we’d need a competition to find the largest amount of suggestive passages in the story and discuss them as a class after.